Welcome to the Williams Nordic Ski Team's official blog!
This is a team page where members can post pictures, musings, questions, ideas for pump-up mixes, among other things. This is a place to let any folks interested in Williams skiing know just what's going on here in the purple valley and just how much we're rocking the cow on the trails.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Men take 3rd (again!) at first day of Dartmouth Carnival

The temperature hovered just above 0 F when the men showed up at Oak Hill for their 10km skate race this morning. Though snow is usually slow at these cold temperatures, the old-snow track was granular, hard-pack, and fast.

A boon for spectators and racers alike was the fact that the sun warmed the stadium considerably by the start of the first race, though much of the race course was in the woods.
Both races were held on a very skiable - but tough - 5km course, the men completing 2 laps and the women racing one lap.

Though our Swiss stud, Dimitri Luthi, posted the top result of the day with a smoking 7th place,sophomore Phil Tosteson had the Race of the Day. A native of this part of New Hampshire, Phil skiied to a PR 15th place on his "home" course.

The fact that Phil placed 15th and was our 4th finisher said a lot about the great day of racing our men's team had. Behind Dimitri, seniors Keith Kantack and Mark Johnson finished in 11th and 12th place, Keith missing 10th place by just 1.3 seconds.

Sarah Tory was the women's top finisher, in 17th. In a 5km which took just over 14 minutes, Tory was just a tenth of a second behind 16th and 10 seconds out of the top 10. Kirsten Johnson was our second score, in 28th place, and Hannah Hausman came back from a stint of sickness to place just outside the points, in 31st.

After the first day of racing, Williams is in 5th place for both nordic and alpine-combined scores.